Attacks with a club/staff with Shillelagh are melee weapon attacks (using the attack action) using your spellcasting modifier (as described in the spell) and would seem to work with Symbiotic Entity. It looks like Primal Savagery attacks are melee spell attacks (as described in the spell), and therefore wouldn't work with Symbiotic Entity (melee spell attacks are not melee weapon attacks).
Symbiotic Entity's description says that it specifically works with melee weapon attacks, so if you make a melee attack with a weapon that is described as a "melee spell attack" in its rules then Symbiotic Entity won't count.
Unfortunately this is a sublcass that is less optimal to downright insultingly awful in games that dont feature humanoid opponents in droves. Your early abilities are short range and melee damage increases with some effects ending early if mushroom form temporary hitpoints are lost early - so you want to be in melee, or close to melee but not being hit, when you wear hide armour AT BEST with standard armour from the phb.
Its potential is made up in temporarily getting 1 hitpoint humanoid spore zombies for an hour - and thats key right there. You will be using them as disposable arrow catchers and trap disposal till they take a hit and fail the con save. You can boost this with humanoid zombies with animate dead - but you now face the stigma of every necromancer ever trying to use them and the spells you use to animate or control them are spells you cant use to conjure animals. No humanoids no zombies, no zombies half your class (or more) gone.
So how should they play to maximise effect? obviously a reach weapon (whip* best bet but its martial) from behind the frontline prevents a lot of problems and still keeps them in 'sporify' range. They want wisdom to avoid spores being resisted and if resisted no damage being dealt, they want dex most likely for ac, perhaps use it for finesse weaponry as well, con because who doesnt if they get in the rough and tumble and of course (unless finesse'ing) str. Thats Monk level of M.A.D.
They provide some lovely mushroom rich flavour to the the druid class but seem disgustingly better for a dip class than a main class. Worse is that narrows the field to a melee dipper who doesnt use metal armour, so a dip class for monks (some)rangers and rogues.
My current build uses a Tortle for the base AC and a shield for a starting AC of 19 which does a lot of work in preventing early damage. There are some other ways to make this work but you have to be fairly choosy about your race selection.
I'd agree that it feels like a multiclass in most other cases though.
Unfortunately this is a sublcass that is less optimal to downright insultingly awful in games that dont feature humanoid opponents in droves. Your early abilities are short range and melee damage increases with some effects ending early if mushroom form temporary hitpoints are lost early - so you want to be in melee, or close to melee but not being hit, when you wear hide armour AT BEST with standard armour from the phb.
Its potential is made up in temporarily getting 1 hitpoint humanoid spore zombies for an hour - and thats key right there. You will be using them as disposable arrow catchers and trap disposal till they take a hit and fail the con save. You can boost this with humanoid zombies with animate dead - but you now face the stigma of every necromancer ever trying to use them and the spells you use to animate or control them are spells you cant use to conjure animals. No humanoids no zombies, no zombies half your class (or more) gone.
I wouldn't say this subclass forces you to go into melee, in my opinion it is more like it gives you an extra option to do so but you can just as well stay at range and do what other non moon druids do. Heck, you even get the chill touch cantrip which with it's range of 120 ft is double of the range other druids can get on create bonfire and frostbite. I also think the fact that you can now use your wild shape for extra survivability while still being able to cast spells could be helpful. Lastly, Fungal infestation also allows you to make zombies out of small or medium beasts so if you are invading a dungeon filled with traps without the prospect of any human sacrifices, go catch a few giant rats beforehand, put them in a cage on a wagon and kill them right before entering the dungeon.
I think if you compare it to circle of the land it does so quite favorably, trading some spellslots on shortrest and passing through difficult terrain for a longrange cantrip, potential meatshields, some extra survivability and some extra damage should the enemy decide to get up close and personal. And it gives you some options to use bonus action and reaction, which they don't have a lot of.
Im working on a Monk(4) Druid(2) and i must say circle of spores works lovely with him. It gives my monk a nice flex to heal downed allies or cause distractions (exp. Fog cloud) plus the cantrips are nice. The extra DMG from the Halo of Spores makes me giggle! Lvl 5 monk extra attack look out!
User, the weird part about circle of Land comparison to Spores is the level 10 immunity to poison and disease that land grants. The lucky land druid who uses this and hunts down / wins the lottery begins farming Gasspores for their home and vegepygmy (yes, they are intelligent, treat them with respect and you will have a vegan* friend for life) also Awaken on a thorny gives you a companion that wont get killed in one shot by every threat that comes along. You can wash in pure poison, no longer get drunk or impaired by narcotics but more importantly the vege minions will be able to hoover up corpses to infest, you cant control them but the theme is perhaps more 'spreading fungal apocalypse' than spore gives you.
Charisma, Many classes are good for dips, perhaps too good, from the DM's perspective it is worth examining if you want to allow M-classing before your campaign begins. As a player I can easily understand why an extra d6 poison damage to the multitude of attacks a monk can achieve is beneficial. Although it doesn't concern me as much one who also takes magic initiate and gets hex or hunters mark as well, increasing the damage per fist at your example of a level 6 character to 3d6+stat on two attacks, or perhaps three with flurry a round. at level 7 though the extra attack per round will mean a non flurry round will deal 9d6 on a target that doesnt die needing the hex to move. A consumable growth potion for an added d4 per hit, or giant str on a 'boss fight'? Ouch!
Take polearm master and use quarterstaff instead of a club, that way you can use your bonus action to make two melee attacks in one turn. Total you could do 28 damage with out accounting for wisdom mod or the halo of spores.
You can easily surpass primal savagery damage also using methods that add second attacks as the 1d6 poison gets added to each, for example quarterstaff with shillelagh using the polearm master feat alows you to take a bonus attack for 1d4+wis+1d6poison and gives you another optional reaction melee if the enemy moves into melee with you getting the 1d6 poison buff as well so for example at lvl10 your at +40 temp hp per SE, spreading spores is out doing the aoe halo of spores of damage for 2d8, your attack action with active shillelagh and symbiotic entity deals 1d8+wis+1d6 poison then bonus 1d4+wis+1d6 poison then on a polearm master reaction another 1d8+wis+1d6 poison it doesnt look like much at first but this druid is a very beefy melee fighter at lvl 10 you have a total of 80 temp hp at your command per short rest and because your a melee weapon fighter your more free to cast a timely spell than a Moon druid whos stuck in his wildshape, I'm not saying it's OP but in my actual game time with it I have enjoyed using spells in the druid spell list that dont normaly make sense for the other sub classes, CoS has been an interesting change of pace for my favorite class and I don't feel it's weak as some people have said it is.
It just occurred to me: at 20th level you could have symbiotic entity going at all times, right?
Woah. Didn't even think about that! Not necessarily useful since you can cast spells as an animal at that level while accessing more than 80 bonus hp, but I do like the imagery of a perpetual mushroom covered character!
I'm running a ghastly halfling spore druid now and he is a beast, I keep up on damage with the barbarian in the party. Some key notes to my build at 4th level I took polearm master feat combined with symbiotic entity and shillelagh while I use the quarterstaff was a nice way to go also i got +2 ac for partial cover bc I would hide in the dragonborn barbarian space and I could reroll nat 1's. All this with some magic items I've bought made this character one of the deadliest I played oh yeah and I get healing spells as a support for me and the barbarian while we lay waste to the dms hard thought plans.
I think part of what makes the Circle of Spores what it is is that it has a strong defense that other Druids have a hard time claiming. Circle of the moon seems like it but AC's tend to be so low that it's really more some offensive capability and just a pool that doesn't have to worry as much about healing. Circle of Land is a ranged caster and battlefield controller, Circle of the Shepard is a healer and summoner but doesn't have the strongest of defenses.
Circle of the spore on the other hand has abilities that can help it traverse into melee combat but it also has some strong ways to defend itself because of the danger that dealing with all of their spore abilities can bring. Sometimes the strongest defense a healer or controller can have is finding ways to make people not want to attack them afterall because it can give them the most freedom on the battlefield to do their jobs. Having this defensive aspect as well as various offensive capabilities or even that defense turned somewhat offensive gives the Circle of Spores a nice niche to play in that other druids have trouble filling. Specially once you get above certain levels where you gain immunity to several states that can be a limiting or problematic as well as the fact that you can no longer be crit hit as long as you aren't incapped bolsters that defensive capability.
What are peoples thoughts on mutliclassing a Circle of Spores into a Hexblade, considering the bonuses to weapon damage/Hexblades Hex on targets and additional access to spells or would a monk be a better multiclass? A Way of the Long Death monk would suit really well thematically with a Circle of Spores druid but unfortunetly the temp HP would not stack from the Touch of Death ability.
What are peoples thoughts on mutliclassing a Circle of Spores into a Hexblade, considering the bonuses to weapon damage/Hexblades Hex on targets and additional access to spells or would a monk be a better multiclass? A Way of the Long Death monk would suit really well thematically with a Circle of Spores druid but unfortunetly the temp HP would not stack from the Touch of Death ability.
I went over some of those options in the mini-guide I wrote here. Monk doesn't play too well with Spores Druid for the way I played it, but it has potential. Going Sorcerer would make your character pretty MAD. I didn't see a lot of multi-class options for Spores that were better than just staying Druid.
I don't think either multi-class well with it. The bonus damage goes away if your temp spore hit points are gone. Melee is going to have them get knocked off quick (even quicker than a straight spore druid, probably). If you're mostly monk or hexblade the temp hit point pool is very low and your higher level melee bonuses are more valuable than the small spore bonus damage. A general dip in monk might not be bad, however, for the wis to AC and martial arts bonus attack.
I’ve played a Spore Druid from levels 2-9 and I have some thoughts about it. At first I thought it would be a melee druid, so I picked the Loxodon race for their greater AC and bonus to Wis. From levels 1-4 I was easily able to keep up with melee, using SE and shillelagh I was a force to be reckoned with (note we didn’t have any other melee people at the time). Although there were many times where the superior hit points from Wild Shape were far more relevant (also we fought a bunch of undead which this archetype struggles with) However when I reached 5th level and realised shillelagh doesn’t scale at all, I switched to using Chill Touch and staying in the middle/back. Generally we were in close enough quarters, and ambushed enough [Ignoring Perception, they just spawned around us], that I got to use HoS fairly often. It was nice when it actually affected creatures, but the low damage didn’t make it spectacular. When the class feature UA came out my DM let me change shillelagh to primal savagery which was significantly better for when I was in melee. When I got Fungal Infestation I felt really conflicted, by that point I had made HoS an integral flavour aspect to my character, and it was a struggle to balance my desire to use HoS and actually ever use FI. Thankfully I have managed to use FI, although never more than once a session at most. Though whenever I did it was either just at the end of combat or the zombie died before my next turn. I am conflicted about SS just because it is a full turn to set up, and can hurt both my allies and myself, plus it’s still doesn’t do anything if they pass their save.
To summarise;
For many levels turning into Beast offered more HP, movement options, often gave Darkvision, did around the same damage without costing a Cantrip slot, and lasted far longer. My Loxodon natural armor also carries over to a few beasts, which gave them a bit better AC [they just needed to have natural armor that wasn’t from an exoskeleton, shell or scales].
We never had the jump on our foes, so SE always ate up my action when I wanted to use it. Plus combat never lasted long enough to make it feel worth it. Levels 2-4 SE and shillelagh worked well together and let me be a good melee person, although that abruptly stopped at 5th.
FI felt really constrained and odd mechanically. It’s close range, and reaction cost meant I rarely used it. When I did the zombie died before my next turn, or the combat was done by that stage. Plus it can turn a small beast into a medium [and physically humanoid] zombie which felt really weird.
While most of the features weren’t great and made me feel either stressed or shameful (for thinking melee works) the spell list has been a really big help and allowed me to survive numerous times when everyone else died.
I‘ve had a lot of fun with my character, even if the features feel misleading and conflicted. I certainly don’t regret my choices, but if I could keep the spell list and just been a land druid, that would have felt much better mechanically and thematically (since those spells are the real stand out).
The THP requirement for the transformation actually made it really bad for multiclass. It would have been so much more fun to use otherwise. Or atleast instead of: as long as you have these temporary hit points it just states as long as you have THP. This would atleast open up stuff with warlock, long death monk, false life etc.
The THP requirement for the transformation actually made it really bad for multiclass. It would have been so much more fun to use otherwise. Or atleast instead of: as long as you have these temporary hit points it just states as long as you have THP. This would atleast open up stuff with warlock, long death monk, false life etc.
I agree. the stipulation about the THP is unnecessarily restrictive and IMHO not a good design. I think i would houserule it the way you suggest, you can maintain the transformation as long as you have THP.
i'd even say THP could be better as well, THP should add but: 1) you can only up to half your max HP in THP, 2) THP expire a max of 1hr after the last application, and 3) THP can only add if applied by different abilities/spells. ie: casting False Life over and over doesn't stack, but False Life + spore druid THP would stack (up to half of max HP).
I'm building a Loxodon multiclass spores-circle druid/fighter with EchoKnight,
where if a trunk counts-as an unarmed-attack,
although it might only do a 1-damage base,.. might it also count as melee?
I ask,
since if you count a trunk-attack as melee, you wouldn't have to put away your shield, to double-up on the number of attacks, to double the amount of necrotic-damage upon-touch,
while the Symbiote is active (each melee attack gets the extra d6 ).
You might not get the benefit of the shield for AC,.. but you wouldn't have to spend the TIME switching, to try to get that extra d6.
Upon close-calls if a monster is looking almost dead, you could choose to do so, get lucky and that is just enough to finish one off,.. and then be ready with your weapon AND shield, without blinking an eye.
Handy!.. or ... trunky?
ie,.. 2nd unarmed-attack while shield is held, would not just be 1-damage, it'd be at least
1+1d6 +str? / dex-if-not ?
If grappling with it, and maintaining a grapple while the symbiote is active, thwacking your enemy with it might also count as additional strikes, or, perhaps, the only strikes you could do, while grappling? ( one would be better than none! )
Attacks with a club/staff with Shillelagh are melee weapon attacks (using the attack action) using your spellcasting modifier (as described in the spell) and would seem to work with Symbiotic Entity. It looks like Primal Savagery attacks are melee spell attacks (as described in the spell), and therefore wouldn't work with Symbiotic Entity (melee spell attacks are not melee weapon attacks).
Symbiotic Entity's description says that it specifically works with melee weapon attacks, so if you make a melee attack with a weapon that is described as a "melee spell attack" in its rules then Symbiotic Entity won't count.
Edit: removed
I think circle of spore druids should be able to turn into plants like how moon druids can turn into elementals
Unfortunately this is a sublcass that is less optimal to downright insultingly awful in games that dont feature humanoid opponents in droves. Your early abilities are short range and melee damage increases with some effects ending early if mushroom form temporary hitpoints are lost early - so you want to be in melee, or close to melee but not being hit, when you wear hide armour AT BEST with standard armour from the phb.
Its potential is made up in temporarily getting 1 hitpoint humanoid spore zombies for an hour - and thats key right there. You will be using them as disposable arrow catchers and trap disposal till they take a hit and fail the con save. You can boost this with humanoid zombies with animate dead - but you now face the stigma of every necromancer ever trying to use them and the spells you use to animate or control them are spells you cant use to conjure animals. No humanoids no zombies, no zombies half your class (or more) gone.
So how should they play to maximise effect? obviously a reach weapon (whip* best bet but its martial) from behind the frontline prevents a lot of problems and still keeps them in 'sporify' range. They want wisdom to avoid spores being resisted and if resisted no damage being dealt, they want dex most likely for ac, perhaps use it for finesse weaponry as well, con because who doesnt if they get in the rough and tumble and of course (unless finesse'ing) str. Thats Monk level of M.A.D.
They provide some lovely mushroom rich flavour to the the druid class but seem disgustingly better for a dip class than a main class. Worse is that narrows the field to a melee dipper who doesnt use metal armour, so a dip class for monks (some)rangers and rogues.
My current build uses a Tortle for the base AC and a shield for a starting AC of 19 which does a lot of work in preventing early damage. There are some other ways to make this work but you have to be fairly choosy about your race selection.
I'd agree that it feels like a multiclass in most other cases though.
I like the race choice to diminish the problems! How has it played out differently from the alternative subclasses in your opinion?
I wouldn't say this subclass forces you to go into melee, in my opinion it is more like it gives you an extra option to do so but you can just as well stay at range and do what other non moon druids do. Heck, you even get the chill touch cantrip which with it's range of 120 ft is double of the range other druids can get on create bonfire and frostbite.
I also think the fact that you can now use your wild shape for extra survivability while still being able to cast spells could be helpful.
Lastly, Fungal infestation also allows you to make zombies out of small or medium beasts so if you are invading a dungeon filled with traps without the prospect of any human sacrifices, go catch a few giant rats beforehand, put them in a cage on a wagon and kill them right before entering the dungeon.
I think if you compare it to circle of the land it does so quite favorably, trading some spellslots on shortrest and passing through difficult terrain for a longrange cantrip, potential meatshields, some extra survivability and some extra damage should the enemy decide to get up close and personal. And it gives you some options to use bonus action and reaction, which they don't have a lot of.
Im working on a Monk(4) Druid(2) and i must say circle of spores works lovely with him. It gives my monk a nice flex to heal downed allies or cause distractions (exp. Fog cloud) plus the cantrips are nice. The extra DMG from the Halo of Spores makes me giggle! Lvl 5 monk extra attack look out!
User, the weird part about circle of Land comparison to Spores is the level 10 immunity to poison and disease that land grants. The lucky land druid who uses this and hunts down / wins the lottery begins farming Gasspores for their home and vegepygmy (yes, they are intelligent, treat them with respect and you will have a vegan* friend for life) also Awaken on a thorny gives you a companion that wont get killed in one shot by every threat that comes along. You can wash in pure poison, no longer get drunk or impaired by narcotics but more importantly the vege minions will be able to hoover up corpses to infest, you cant control them but the theme is perhaps more 'spreading fungal apocalypse' than spore gives you.
Charisma, Many classes are good for dips, perhaps too good, from the DM's perspective it is worth examining if you want to allow M-classing before your campaign begins. As a player I can easily understand why an extra d6 poison damage to the multitude of attacks a monk can achieve is beneficial. Although it doesn't concern me as much one who also takes magic initiate and gets hex or hunters mark as well, increasing the damage per fist at your example of a level 6 character to 3d6+stat on two attacks, or perhaps three with flurry a round. at level 7 though the extra attack per round will mean a non flurry round will deal 9d6 on a target that doesnt die needing the hex to move. A consumable growth potion for an added d4 per hit, or giant str on a 'boss fight'? Ouch!
Take polearm master and use quarterstaff instead of a club, that way you can use your bonus action to make two melee attacks in one turn. Total you could do 28 damage with out accounting for wisdom mod or the halo of spores.
You can easily surpass primal savagery damage also using methods that add second attacks as the 1d6 poison gets added to each, for example quarterstaff with shillelagh using the polearm master feat alows you to take a bonus attack for 1d4+wis+1d6poison and gives you another optional reaction melee if the enemy moves into melee with you getting the 1d6 poison buff as well so for example at lvl10 your at +40 temp hp per SE, spreading spores is out doing the aoe halo of spores of damage for 2d8, your attack action with active shillelagh and symbiotic entity deals 1d8+wis+1d6 poison then bonus 1d4+wis+1d6 poison then on a polearm master reaction another 1d8+wis+1d6 poison it doesnt look like much at first but this druid is a very beefy melee fighter at lvl 10 you have a total of 80 temp hp at your command per short rest and because your a melee weapon fighter your more free to cast a timely spell than a Moon druid whos stuck in his wildshape, I'm not saying it's OP but in my actual game time with it I have enjoyed using spells in the druid spell list that dont normaly make sense for the other sub classes, CoS has been an interesting change of pace for my favorite class and I don't feel it's weak as some people have said it is.
Woah. Didn't even think about that! Not necessarily useful since you can cast spells as an animal at that level while accessing more than 80 bonus hp, but I do like the imagery of a perpetual mushroom covered character!
I'm running a ghastly halfling spore druid now and he is a beast, I keep up on damage with the barbarian in the party. Some key notes to my build at 4th level I took polearm master feat combined with symbiotic entity and shillelagh while I use the quarterstaff was a nice way to go also i got +2 ac for partial cover bc I would hide in the dragonborn barbarian space and I could reroll nat 1's. All this with some magic items I've bought made this character one of the deadliest I played oh yeah and I get healing spells as a support for me and the barbarian while we lay waste to the dms hard thought plans.
I think part of what makes the Circle of Spores what it is is that it has a strong defense that other Druids have a hard time claiming. Circle of the moon seems like it but AC's tend to be so low that it's really more some offensive capability and just a pool that doesn't have to worry as much about healing. Circle of Land is a ranged caster and battlefield controller, Circle of the Shepard is a healer and summoner but doesn't have the strongest of defenses.
Circle of the spore on the other hand has abilities that can help it traverse into melee combat but it also has some strong ways to defend itself because of the danger that dealing with all of their spore abilities can bring. Sometimes the strongest defense a healer or controller can have is finding ways to make people not want to attack them afterall because it can give them the most freedom on the battlefield to do their jobs. Having this defensive aspect as well as various offensive capabilities or even that defense turned somewhat offensive gives the Circle of Spores a nice niche to play in that other druids have trouble filling. Specially once you get above certain levels where you gain immunity to several states that can be a limiting or problematic as well as the fact that you can no longer be crit hit as long as you aren't incapped bolsters that defensive capability.
What are peoples thoughts on mutliclassing a Circle of Spores into a Hexblade, considering the bonuses to weapon damage/Hexblades Hex on targets and additional access to spells or would a monk be a better multiclass? A Way of the Long Death monk would suit really well thematically with a Circle of Spores druid but unfortunetly the temp HP would not stack from the Touch of Death ability.
Yevna Galanodel - Wood Elf | Level 8 | Druid/Circle of Spores 6 - Ranger 2 - Ravnica
Nyx - Satyr | Level 9 | Rouge/Swashbuckler 5 - Bard/Collage of Lore 4 - Lost Mine of Phandelver/Storm King's Thunder
I went over some of those options in the mini-guide I wrote here. Monk doesn't play too well with Spores Druid for the way I played it, but it has potential. Going Sorcerer would make your character pretty MAD. I didn't see a lot of multi-class options for Spores that were better than just staying Druid.
I don't think either multi-class well with it. The bonus damage goes away if your temp spore hit points are gone. Melee is going to have them get knocked off quick (even quicker than a straight spore druid, probably). If you're mostly monk or hexblade the temp hit point pool is very low and your higher level melee bonuses are more valuable than the small spore bonus damage. A general dip in monk might not be bad, however, for the wis to AC and martial arts bonus attack.
I’ve played a Spore Druid from levels 2-9 and I have some thoughts about it. At first I thought it would be a melee druid, so I picked the Loxodon race for their greater AC and bonus to Wis. From levels 1-4 I was easily able to keep up with melee, using SE and shillelagh I was a force to be reckoned with (note we didn’t have any other melee people at the time). Although there were many times where the superior hit points from Wild Shape were far more relevant (also we fought a bunch of undead which this archetype struggles with) However when I reached 5th level and realised shillelagh doesn’t scale at all, I switched to using Chill Touch and staying in the middle/back. Generally we were in close enough quarters, and ambushed enough [Ignoring Perception, they just spawned around us], that I got to use HoS fairly often. It was nice when it actually affected creatures, but the low damage didn’t make it spectacular. When the class feature UA came out my DM let me change shillelagh to primal savagery which was significantly better for when I was in melee. When I got Fungal Infestation I felt really conflicted, by that point I had made HoS an integral flavour aspect to my character, and it was a struggle to balance my desire to use HoS and actually ever use FI. Thankfully I have managed to use FI, although never more than once a session at most. Though whenever I did it was either just at the end of combat or the zombie died before my next turn. I am conflicted about SS just because it is a full turn to set up, and can hurt both my allies and myself, plus it’s still doesn’t do anything if they pass their save.
To summarise;
For many levels turning into Beast offered more HP, movement options, often gave Darkvision, did around the same damage without costing a Cantrip slot, and lasted far longer. My Loxodon natural armor also carries over to a few beasts, which gave them a bit better AC [they just needed to have natural armor that wasn’t from an exoskeleton, shell or scales].
We never had the jump on our foes, so SE always ate up my action when I wanted to use it. Plus combat never lasted long enough to make it feel worth it. Levels 2-4 SE and shillelagh worked well together and let me be a good melee person, although that abruptly stopped at 5th.
FI felt really constrained and odd mechanically. It’s close range, and reaction cost meant I rarely used it. When I did the zombie died before my next turn, or the combat was done by that stage. Plus it can turn a small beast into a medium [and physically humanoid] zombie which felt really weird.
While most of the features weren’t great and made me feel either stressed or shameful (for thinking melee works) the spell list has been a really big help and allowed me to survive numerous times when everyone else died.
I‘ve had a lot of fun with my character, even if the features feel misleading and conflicted. I certainly don’t regret my choices, but if I could keep the spell list and just been a land druid, that would have felt much better mechanically and thematically (since those spells are the real stand out).
The THP requirement for the transformation actually made it really bad for multiclass. It would have been so much more fun to use otherwise. Or atleast instead of: as long as you have these temporary hit points it just states as long as you have THP. This would atleast open up stuff with warlock, long death monk, false life etc.
I agree. the stipulation about the THP is unnecessarily restrictive and IMHO not a good design. I think i would houserule it the way you suggest, you can maintain the transformation as long as you have THP.
i'd even say THP could be better as well, THP should add but:
1) you can only up to half your max HP in THP,
2) THP expire a max of 1hr after the last application, and
3) THP can only add if applied by different abilities/spells. ie: casting False Life over and over doesn't stack, but False Life + spore druid THP would stack (up to half of max HP).
I'm building a Loxodon multiclass spores-circle druid/fighter with EchoKnight,
where if a trunk counts-as an unarmed-attack,
although it might only do a 1-damage base,.. might it also count as melee?
I ask,
since if you count a trunk-attack as melee, you wouldn't have to put away your shield, to double-up on the number of attacks, to double the amount of necrotic-damage upon-touch,
while the Symbiote is active (each melee attack gets the extra d6 ).
You might not get the benefit of the shield for AC,.. but you wouldn't have to spend the TIME switching, to try to get that extra d6.
Upon close-calls if a monster is looking almost dead, you could choose to do so, get lucky and that is just enough to finish one off,.. and then be ready with your weapon AND shield, without blinking an eye.
Handy!.. or ... trunky?
ie,.. 2nd unarmed-attack while shield is held, would not just be 1-damage, it'd be at least
1+1d6 +str? / dex-if-not ?
If grappling with it, and maintaining a grapple while the symbiote is active, thwacking your enemy with it might also count as additional strikes, or, perhaps, the only strikes you could do, while grappling? ( one would be better than none! )